How do I clear a house after someone has died?

Two things go wrong when a house is cleared after a death, and both are avoidable. Things of real value are thrown away because nobody looked properly, and families fall out because nobody agreed who was deciding. Working in a fixed order — secure, search, value, distribute, dispose — prevents both, and it also gives everyone a defensible answer to the question of why something went.

Safety

Step by step

1. Secure the property and tell the insurer.Lock up, remove obvious valuables to one safe location, and check whether the heating should be left on to prevent frozen pipes. Notify the buildings and contents insurer immediately: most policies restrict cover once a property is unoccupied for a stated period, and some require specific measures.
2. Establish who has authority before touching anything.The executor named in the will, or the administrator if there is no will, is the person legally responsible for the estate. Everyone else is helping. Saying this out loud in week one prevents most of the disputes that otherwise follow.
3. Find the will and the key paperwork first.Look for the will, the deeds, insurance policies, pension and investment paperwork, bank and building society books, share certificates, funeral plans and premium bonds. Check with any solicitor they used and with the National Will Register if you cannot find it.
4. Search the house properly before any bag leaves.Cash and documents are routinely found inside books, in coat and suit pockets, taped under drawers, in the freezer, in handbags, in tins and in the pockets of luggage. Go through books page by page for the generation that used them as safes. Do this before the first charity bag.
5. Photograph every room before anything moves.It is a record for the estate, it settles later questions about what was there, and it is quietly valuable to people who did not get to say goodbye to the house.
6. Get a valuation on anything that might be worth something.Jewellery, watches, paintings, silver, ceramics, militaria, tools, musical instruments, older furniture, coins and stamps. Probate may require a valuation in any case. An auction house will usually look at photographs for nothing, and this step is where most avoidable loss happens.
7. Distribute to family with a fair and visible method.Any specific gifts in the will happen first, and are not optional. For the rest, a round-robin choosing order with the sequence reversed each round is transparent and it works. Write down who took what.
8. Then sell, donate and dispose.House-clearance firms, auction houses, charity collections and the council's bulky waste service each suit different things. Get more than one clearance quote and ask specifically whether the price accounts for saleable items, because a good firm will offset them.
9. Deal with paperwork and personal items last and slowly.Photographs, letters and papers are what people most regret disposing of quickly. Box them, take them home, and go through them in a year when this is not happening in a cold house against a deadline.
10. Check anyone you pay is a licensed waste carrier.Householder duty of care applies to a deceased person's household waste as much as your own. Check the registration on the Environment Agency public register, and get a written transfer note.

Tips

• If a sale or a tenancy is forcing a deadline, box everything undecided and move it. Deciding under time pressure in a house full of grief is where the regret comes from.
• Agree at the start what happens to disputed items — usually that they go into storage rather than to anyone — so no single argument stops the whole job.
• Keep every receipt and clearance invoice. Reasonable clearance costs are usually an estate expense.
• Take breaks on a schedule rather than when exhausted. This work is much heavier than it looks and people make bad decisions in hour seven.
• Old paperwork with personal data on it still needs shredding. Identity fraud against the recently deceased is a known and organised crime.

Common mistakes

• Skipping to disposal because it feels unbearable — It is the stage where money is lost, where irreplaceable documents go, and where the family disagreement becomes permanent. The order exists for a reason.
• Letting a clearance firm take everything unvalued — Some of the price of a cheap clearance is the resale value of what is inside. Get the valuable categories looked at first.
• Not telling the insurer the property is unoccupied — An unoccupied property claim on a policy that was never told is very commonly declined, and empty houses suffer escape of water and theft at high rates.
• Taking things before probate is settled — The personal representative is personally liable for distributing the estate correctly. Informal early removal creates real legal exposure and real family conflict.

Questions people ask